Juror’s Note

From the bold and provocative submissions in this year’s Life Framer competition, we kept returning to Francisco Gonzalez Camacho’s series of personal reflections. Sometimes it’s the small and quiet thing that unexpectedly stands out. Slow and introspective, the project is a refreshingly intimate offering from an artist’s inner life.

Gonzalez Camacho noticed a crack in the pavement and stopped to align his own shadow, so that the line fractured his silhouette. The resulting image speaks to the feeling of being internally divided, in a way that most conventional photographs can’t do, through only a few textured shapes and a figure.

Gonzalez Camacho uses the techniques of infrared, inversion, and photopolymer etching to make his imagery. These processes confound expectations of what should be light and what should be dark. The light becomes impenetrable, and the contents of the shadows become easier to understand. It’s a way to look clearly into the darkness. Shadows in the landscape, like those in our own soul or psyche, can be a fearsome place to go. In Gonzalez Camacho’s images, nature provides a sympathetic reflection, a gentle pathway into the dark.

See more about the exhibition Here